ASK DR. SCHUND
(C)1989 Alan M. Schwartz
Dr. Schund, what purpose does the bellybutton serve?
Let us begin by noting that the common misconception of the
bellybutton as a singular anatomical construct is in fact an
erroneous and shortsighted misconception. The bellybutton,
technically referred to as the "Love Dimple" (incunabulis
amoraticus), exists in two vastly different configurations.
The concave bellybutton, the "insie," is direct proof of the
existence of a kind and loving, forgiving and partying god. Many
is the lost backpacker or camper at the ragged edge of death who
has pulled a wad of bellybutton lint out of his insie and, using
it as tinder, saved his life with a signal fire and rescue. Many
of us have, lying in bed, engaged in the willful hedonistic
pleasures of eating celery and dipping the stalks, repeatedly,
into that little mound of salt so well contained within our
insies. How many married couples have in the concealed privacy
of their own bedrooms shared the responsibility, he with the salt
in his insie, she with the peanut butter in hers? What joy there
is in tracking down, cornering, and administering extreme unction
to that last little dab!
Imagine a world without insies, never knowing if your shirt seam
or belt buckle was centered, never knowing just when that bikini
bottom was entering the danger zone short of measuring from your
collar bone and correcting for parallax. How would the willowy
woman snare the lusting man if it were not for her insie slyly
peering from a bared midriff, making celery eyes at her target?
How would the hypermasculine, beer-gutted 300 pound male animal
know to avoid grabbing his thumb and urinating down his pants leg
except for the guidance rendered by that merry little tactile
depression in his belly? Just imagine not having a place to hold
your pencil when using both hands to type!
Just as the pious, partying segment of our population exults in
the celebration of their shapely and alluring insies, so the
devil-marked, forever damned bearers of convex deformities, those
perpetually burdened with "outsies," cower in shame, malformed
mutants grotesque and crippled offending the decency of the human
race in the past, in the present, and into the imponderable
depths of infinity.
Strange fleshy execrescent deformations stretch and fill the
abhorrent outsie to overflowing like some throbbing malignancy
dedicated to the Dark Lord! The Elephant Man engaged upon a
successful program of hideous self-mutilation, quietly satisfied
that his outsie would never be noticed. Since the dawn of
recorded history, the remains of tragic backpackers have been
found abandoned in the wilderness, their fingertips having met
only moist pulsating flesh instead of the life giving umbilicus
lint that might have been used as used as tinder to start a fire
and save their lives. Even this brutal evolutionary outcasting
has not rid us of the burden of outsies. How much longer will
this abhorrent toleration of sin made flesh be allowed to
continue unrestrained!
Across our great nation marriages have been shattered on their
first night, the loving new wife drowning in tears knowing she
will not have salt with her bedtime celery, the raging husband
first realizing that he has been cheated of peanut butter with
his. How can we tolerate the burden of shame as hollow
caricatures of human beings are smuggled to Japan for corrective
excavative surgery? That men and women are willing to risk a 30%
chance of death by elective surgery is a grisly underscore to
this recurrent tragedy.
The foulest scum upon the water must surely be the rumored
existence of connoisseurs of this deformity. We cannot
rationalize a collection of sub-human animals viewing videotapes
of the progressive display of fleshly protuberant outsies,
wallowing in the turgid stretch of enfolding dermis, deriving
primal excitation from pustulant thoughts. Imagine the wealthy
deviant buying a bearer of this stigma, strapping the victim to a
wooden rack, and parading bundles of green stalks and jars of
chunky style, laughing harshly amid the screams and tears. It is
too horrible to contemplate.
The bellybutton serves a god's unbiased indicator of desirable
and detestable people. Look down and realize your glory or your
shame.